WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Donald
Trump signed into law on Tuesday legislation that bans the use of
Kaspersky Lab within the U.S. government, capping a months-long effort
to purge the Moscow-based antivirus firm from federal agencies amid
concerns it was vulnerable to Kremlin influence.

The ban, included as part of a broader defense policy spending bill that
Trump signed, reinforces a directive issued by the Trump administration
in September that civilian agencies remove Kaspersky Lab software within
90 days. The law applies to both civilian and military networks.

"The case against Kaspersky is well-documented and deeply concerning.
This law is long overdue," said Democratic Senator Jeanne Shaheen, who
led calls in Congress to scrub the software from government computers.
She added that the company's software represented a "grave risk" to U.S.
national security.

Kaspersky Lab has repeatedly denied that it has ties to any government
and said it would not help a government with cyber espionage. In an
attempt to address suspicions, the company said in October it would
submit the source code of its software and future updates for inspection
by independent parties.

U.S. officials have said that step, while welcomed, would not be
sufficient.

In a statement on Tuesday, Kaspersky Lab said it continued to have
"serious concerns" about the law "due to its geographic-specific
approach to cybersecurity."

The logo of Russia's Kaspersky Lab is on displayat the company's
office in Moscow, Russia October 27, 2017. REUTERS/Maxim Shemetov

It added that the company was assessing its options and would
continue to "protect its customers from cyber threats (while)
collaborating globally with the IT security community to fight
cybercrime."

On Tuesday, Christopher Krebs, a senior cyber security official at
the Department of Homeland Security, told reporters that nearly all
government agencies had fully removed Kaspersky products from their
networks in compliance with the September order.

Kaspersky' official response to the ban did not appear to contain
any information that would change the administration's assessment of
Kaspersky Lab, Krebs said.